Category: Computing

Programming Bee Bots

Last term in, our computing lessons, we learnt how to programme movable toys called bee bots. We started off by making sure we could give clear instructions to our friends to more safely around the classroom and library. One of us closed our eyes and the other person had to listen carefully to the instructions.

Then we programmed the bee bots to move around the classroom. Making sure we reset the bee bot before each new instruction.

In our next lesson we then designed our own bee bot mats. These had to be measured and divided up into a grid so that each square represented the same size as one movement forward on the bee bot.

Once we had finished our bee bot mats, we were ready to programme the bee bots, to move from a starting point to an end point. Then in our final lesson we wrote down our algorithms to see if our partner could follow them and get the bee bot to move from one place on the mat to another.

Programming bee bots

This half term we have been creating our own bee bot mats based on a Julia Donaldson (our author focus) book. Can you guess the stories these are based on?

Today we were writing algorithms to make the bee bot move from one place on the mat to another place on the mat. We chose 2 places on our bee bot mat and then used the bee bots to check what route we would send our bee bot on.

Then we wrote our algorithms.

2S – Bee bots!

Today Miss Spicer cast a magic spell and turned us all into bee bots!! We couldn’t move without being programmed by our partner.

This term we will become computer programmers, we will be exploring using the bee bots further and learn to program roamers too.

We had a look at bee bots and roamers to compare the similarities and differences.

We refreshed our memories of how to use the bee bots, using the bee bots and our partner bee bots.

Finally we were ready to take on the bee bot challenge! We had to give our partner bot a set of instructions to get them around the different challenge courses.

Computing

This term we became detectives to help Mr Bulpitt solve the mystery of the missing cake.  He emailed us the details and we used our computing skills to help us sort through the clues.  When we had collected all the information we entered it onto a spreadsheet.  Then we looked at how to filter the information to identify the thief.

Look at the data. Can you remember how to use the filter button? How did it help us?

E-Saftey

We have used lots of different IT equipment this year including ipads and laptops that we can use to go online.  It is important to know how to stay safe when we are using the internet.  We read the story of Smartie the penguin and helped him make good decisions about what to do when things go wrong online.  Can you remember some of the things that Smartie had to think about?

Then we made our own posters to help people stay safe online.  Tell someone at home the important messages you included on your poster.

Mystery!

This term in computing we helped Mr Bulpitt solve the mystery of the missing cake!

We received an email asking for help and began to investigate. We got some written information and audio clips with clues. Once we had collated all the information we put them into a spreadsheet.

Using the filters on Microsoft Excel we were able to identify the person and solve the mystery.

As we were sending and receiving emails we also talked about e-safety, particularly with emails. We thought of some top tips and created posters to let everyone else know how to stay safe on the internet and particularly when using emails.